But at times, even this veteran can't tell where the person at the other end of the line is calling from.

"(They) try to tell you they're in like the cane fields," she said. "All they see is pineapple fields. That's really difficult."

It's like looking for a needle in a haystack, with the clock ticking.

"Up until this point in time, unless we could talk to you, and unless you knew where you were and could explain it to us clearly, we had no way of knowing where you are," Gordon Bruce, Honolulu Department of Information Technology, said.